A.D. 1841.] PARTIAL OPERATION OF THE COMBINATION LAWS. 501 in that region, traces entirely to the mischievous influ-altogether failed in their objects, and had even rendered ence of the interference with all trade formerly exercised by the Danish Government. 66 more violent and dangerous those trade associations which existed in spite of the law. It was remarked that although the masters had often combined to lower the rates of their workmen's wages, as well as to resist a demand for an increase, to regulate their hours of working, and sometimes to discharge their men who would not consent to the conditions offered, no instances had been adduced of any masters having been punished for such offences against the law. Prosecutions against masters had, indeed, taken place where the steps taken by the masters had been followed by riotous proceedings and acts of violence; but in no case had a conviction been obtained. On the other hand, to show the partial and unjust working of these laws, it was found that prosecutions for similar offences had frequently been carried on under the statute and the common law against the workmen, numbers of whom had, in consequence, suffered different periods of imprisonment. The committee, accordingly, recommended that "masters and workmen should be freed from such restrictions, and be left at perfect liberty to make such agreements as they may mutually think proper." And an act was accordingly passed to that effect. The silly system of attempting to fix the price of bread by law, was maintained far into the present century, and is even now not everywhere abolished. The most arbitrary acts were done by those entrusted with power to interfere with the baking trade. Mr. Scholey, alderman of London, in his evidence before the Select Committee on the Bread Laws, in 1815, stated that the Court of Aldermen had, of their own judgment, shortly before fined a baker £500 for having traded in flour on which he was to have only a factorage-an offence of a purely imaginary kind. "The regulation of the trade," says Mr. McCulloch, was supposed to be necessary, to prevent that monopoly on the part of the bakers which, it was feared, might otherwise take place. But it is needless, perhaps, to say that this apprehension was of the most futile description. The trade of a baker is one which may be easily learned, and it requires no considerable capital to carry it on; so that were those engaged in the business in any particular town to attempt to force up prices to an artificial elevation, the combination would be immediately defeated by the competition of others; and even though this were not the case, the facility with which bread may be baked at home, would of itself serve to nullify the efforts of any combination. But the assize regulations were not merely useless-they rendered the price of flour a matter of comparative indifference to the baker, and they obliged the baker to use the finest flour and make the best bread-to sell at the same rate as those who used inferior flour, and whose bread was decidedly of a worse quality. But these considerations, how obvious soever they may appear, were for a long time entirely overlooked. According, however, as the-driven from this employment, shut out from that, use of wheaten bread was extended, it was found to be impracticable to set assizes in small towns and villages; and notwithstanding that the fewness of the bakers in such places gave them greater facilities for combining together, the price of bread was almost uniformly lower in them than in places where assizes were set. In consequence, partly, of this circumstance, but still more of the increase of intelligence as to such matters, the practice of setting an assize was gradually relinquished in most places, and in 1815 it was expressly abolished by an act of the Legislature (53 Geo. III. cap. 99), in London and its environs. In other places, though the power to set the assize still subsists, it is seldom acted upon, and has fallen into comparative disuse." It was not until 1824 that wiser and more equitable views of the freedom of workmen and masters were finally established, by the repeal of the Combination Laws. In that year a select committee of the House of Commons reported strongly against the whole body of the laws then existing on this subject. After collecting a large amount of evidence from various persons familiar with the practical working of these regulations, the committee declared their opinion that the laws to prevent combinations and meetings among workmen had Thus the present century has seen almost all of these vexatious restrictions removed. The mischievous assize of labour, or system of settling the rates of wages by order of justices of the peace, had existed ever since the fourteenth century, untouched by constitutional settlements or Bill of Rights-indeed, was scarcely heard of as a grievance amid all the political discussions of that long period. No greater proof can be found of how little the people were regarded by the parliaments and rulers of those bad old times. For four hundred years the poor were thus harassed and oppressed regulated, watched, and kept down by fine and imprisonment-in a way which rendered their supposed emancipation from the old feudal serfdom a change but in name. What they might do, and what they might not do, in the way of exercise of their industry--their only birthright-would have comprised more rules than a man with leisure could have got by heart in a lifetime. The very intervals for their meals were defined by law. And amid all this no voice was heard, except an occasional outcry on the part of those who were more happily circumstanced, against the alleged idleness of the poor. Whenever labour became scarcer, whether by reason of a plague removing a large number of the competitors for employment, or from the natural increase of employment due to the growth of wealth and manufactures, this cry was raised. Just as in France, before the great Revolution, no belief was more common among the privileged classes than that the labouring class would not work; and as in our own colonies, since we have emancipated the negroes, it is the common complaint of the planters that the blacks are lazy, and will not toil for the old remuneration of mere food and shelter, so it was customary at every period when the English labourer's wages had a tendency to rise, to exclaim against their exorbitant demands, and to call upon the Legislature for more stringent laws. Some of these cries were, no doubt, honestly believed in. Before the principles taught by Adam Smith were generally understood, a notion prevailed that the foreign commerce of England was dependent upon the power of manufacturers to obtain cheap labour; and that a rise in wages would prevent their supplying goods to foreign markets at those low rates which it was supposed were the cause of our export trades. Among the many good effects of the promulgation of sounder views, we may place in the first rank the dispersion of these false doctrines. It was at last perceived that countries in which labour was cheaper than with us--as was the case almost throughout the Continent had no superiority in the condition of their export trade, but the contrary; while in countries in which labour was dearer, as in America and the new colonies, the export trade was often remarkably flourishing. In the latter case the facts observed were no doubt owing chiefly to the greater abundance and superior natural fertility of land; but, in fact, exports are merely the mode in which a country pays for the foreign articles which it desires to consume. If, therefore, the exporters were really injured by high wages, they would simply increase the price of their goods. It is absurd to suppose that English consumers would go without tea because the cottons and woollens which we export to China in exchange had risen in price through an increase of wages in those particular trades. The merchants would only export some other articles, or would recompense themselves for the additional expensc of their trade by a rise in the price of tea. It is quite true that many restrictions on domestic industry were supported even by the labouring classes themselves. The outcry against that settling of foreign artificers in England, by which our arts and manufactures in earlier times have been so largely improved, has always been popular; and the legislation on this subject, which has so often disgraced our statute book, may be said to have been forced upon the rulers for the time being by the clamour of the people, who were not aware that great branches of industry, hitherto scarcely followed in this country, had been created by the very causes which they desired to remove. The Guild regulations, which were all so many obstructions to fair play in the struggle for employment, were naturally supported by those fortunate classes-for labour itself had its aristocracy and privileged few-who benefited by them at the expense of the consumer. Such, too, were the old apprenticeship laws, which were always jealously supported by the working classes. By the old common law of England, which may be said to have been the spontaneous growth of the moral sense of the people, every one had a right to employ himself in any business he pleased. Bad legislation, however, succeeded in corrupting the popular mind on this point by sowing ideas of a totally different character. By the Statute of Apprenticeship, which existed up to the year 1814, it was enacted that no person should for the future exercise any trade, craft, or mystery at that time exercised in England and Wales, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least. The judges, however, who had been bred in different views of law, were always unwilling to give effect to the provisions of this statute. Nothing, indeed, could be more unjust than this regulation; nor was its injustice mitigated by the extreme harshness of the provisions generally inserted in apprenticeship indentures. Moreover, nothing could be more unreasonable than the fixing of one period—especially a period so long as seven years-for the learning of every craft. There were, of course, trades which required infinitely longer time to learn than others; and, of course, the capacities, and the industry, and zeal of learners were also various. Under the system, however, which the wisdom of the rulers of our forefathers instituted, all occupations were brought to one lifeless level. A dreary servitude was the only "porch and inlet" by which the British workman could find his way to the privilege of toiling for his daily bread. No amount of steady perseverance in the study of his art could save him from one week of this term; no willingness on the part of the master to take him for a shorter period could relieve him from the disabilities of the law; and if he had the misfortune to be brought up without "serving his time," as it was called, to any business, no after struggle could repair the error. It must be admitted, however, that the opposition on the part of the working classes to the admission of workmen who had not, like themselves, served a term of apprenticeship, was not unreasonable. As long as law or custom sanctioned and maintained these barriers, it was a manifest injustice to the workmen of any particular trade to be suddenly flooded with competitors for work who had not been subjected to a similar ordeal. It is possible to conceive that the wages in any trade might be reduced far below the general level by a relaxation of these rules. Nor was the opposition to immigrations of foreign workmen, however illiberal, altogether based upon delusions. The statesmen of the past, who have framed the laws for the regulation of our domestic and foreign trade, have been guilty of far graver economical errors than were implied in the workman's dislike of large importations of labour. These immigrations, it must be remembered, generally took place in consequence, not of an extraordinary demand here for workmen, but of some political circumstances abroad. Such was the celebrated Edict of Nantes, which drove out of France large numbers of Protestant workmen, who tock refuge in this country. These refugees were in great part connected with the silk trade, and the redundancy of labour which they occasioned in that trade was certainly one of the causes why the English weavers sunk to that position of dependence to which they have so long been doomed. The only traces of these laws now existing are to be found in some city regulations, and in the voluntary practice of certain trades, from the effect of which they are rapidly dying out. We must, however, note a remarkable exception to this principle in the legal profession, where, as if for ever to deprive the better educated classes of any right to reproach the A.D. 1841.] GRADUAL ADVANCE OF FREE TRADE IDEAS. 503 workman with his illiberality and selfishness, regulations of the last century, generally known by the name of still exist as to the term of apprenticeship or articles, "Physiocrats," amidst much that was vague or erroneous, the number of articled clerks, and other things, which did indeed plead for liberty of commerce; but their chief though based, as all these abuses are, upon a pretended object appears to have been to support their mistaken regard for public interest, have really no other effect theory that, as the land (so they held) was the source of than to restrict the number of lawyers, and maintain all production, one tax laid directly on the soil would a rate of remuneration above that level to which it really tax commodities as much as the customs and would inevitably fall under a system of free trade in excise laws then existing. law. It must not, however, be assumed that the system of equality and fair play for labour, either of arm and brain, has yet, even with these exceptions, been completely established. In the public service, though it is greatly improved in comparison with former periods, nothing hke equality has yet been secured. The army and navy are surrounded by barriers tending to keep out all but favoured classes. In the Civil Service some attempt has been made to inaugurate a better system, by the institution of competitive examinations. These examinations, however, have in practice as yet been far from satisfactory, from the unwillingness of the Government to adopt what is called "open" competition; and from the custom of examining the candidates in branches of learning which are practically open only to the few who receive expensive educations-a system the more objectionable, as in most cases these special qualifications have no real relation to the duties to be performed. Except in the Indian Service, it may even be doubted whether any improvement has yet been attained. CHAPTER LII. The History of Free Trade (Introduction continued)-Customs and Excise Laws-Origin of Free Trade Ideas-Protectionist Doctrines-The "Commercial" System-Policy of Restriction-Beginning of the Great Commercial Reform-Pitt's leaning towards Free Trade- Ridiculous Character of our Tariff before his Time-Pitt's Commercial Reforms Defeated by the War-Difficulties of the British Merchant under the old Custom House Laws-Sketch of the History of the Corn Laws-Selfishness of the Landowners-Cruel Prohibition of Cheap Food-Government Rewards for making Bread Scarce-Popular Remedies for the Scarcity of Bread-Alleged Agricultural DistressPassing of the Corn Law of 1815-Corn Law Riots-Great Excitement throughout the Country-Members of Parliament attacked in the of London in 1820-Lord Liverpool's Reply-Lord Stanley's early Advocacy of Free Trade-Parliamentary Inquiries into the State of the Foreign Trade—Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Canning's Reforms-Number of Duties for Protection of the Landlord's Interests-Failure of the Corn Laws to Improve the Farmer's Circumstances-Identity of the Interests of Landed and Manufacturing Classes-Cost of "Protection" to the People-Difference between Manufacturing and Agricultural Restriction. THE struggle of the people to free themselves from the mischievous interference with domestic trade and industry sketched in the last chapter was of the utmost importance to the national progress; but it is the struggle for the reform of our customs and excise laws which is more generally referred to as the free trade battle. That great movement commenced within the lifetime of men now living. Isolated passages have been discovered in early English authors, implying the doctrine of free trade; but the writers were evidently not aware of the importance of the principle they enunciated, nor prepared to follow it into its consequences. The French economists Streets-Effects of the Law-The Free Trade Petition of the Merchants Adam Smith was the first to point out clearly the true interest of the nation in these matters. Up to his time our excise and customs laws had been in the greatest possible confusion. Prohibitions had been imposed in innumerable instances, for what was called the protection of British industry-that is, for compelling the people to purchase nothing but home-made commodities. In other cases, high customs' duties were laid on for the avowed purpose of discouraging importation. Our forefathers were under the impression that money, or, what is the same thing, the precious metals, were of far more importance to the country than any other kind of merchandise; and as all goods sent abroad must be paid for either in money or other goods, they believed that by diminishing imports they must increase the quantities of gold and silver brought into the country. Adam Smith's work, "The Wealth of Nations," at length exposed the folly of these views; and the works of subsequent writers, including Bentham, Ricardo, J. B. Say, and Mr. Mill, finally demolished all that was erroneous in these doctrines. As to the principle of what was called "protection" generally, it was shown that it had no effect whatever in increasing the amount of employment for the people, while it laid the consumer under a heavy tax in the increased price of imported articles. The true nature of foreign commerce was for the first time explained, for the guidance of legislators and for the enlightenment of the people generally. It was seen that the sole object of that foreign trade, which our statesmen had regarded with favour simply on account of the large amount of our productions which it caused to be exported, really and truly centred in the commodities brought back in exchange. In short, the nation required annually so much tea, sugar, coffee, silks, corn, and other things; and in order to purchase these, our merchants carried abroad our cottons, woollens, hardware, and other articles. For that which we produced most easily, the foreigner gave us the things in which the facility of production was on his side; and thus both parties were benefited. The folly of the protective system must therefore be apparent. Those who thought that by purchasing of the foreigner we deprived our own countrymen of a demand for their productions, forgot that for every pound's worth of goods purchased abroad, the foreigner necessarily took a pound's worth of our products, while the trade could not go on unless it were profitable to both sides. Even if gold, instead of our goods, were our mode of payment, the case was precisely the same; because, as England is not a gold-producing country, it could only obtain supplies of the precious metals by sending goods, in the first instance, to exchange for such uncouth commodities as alligars, allibanies, brawls, carridarries, chucklaes, cushtaes, and cuttanees. He was to have his eye on endless articles, which Englishmen were on no account to be permitted to buy. He was to look into all foreign books for a smack of Popish doctrine, which rendered them at once unlawful merchandise. In the matter of brown holland, for an example of his duties, he was carefully to distinguish between Bay holland, Brabant holland, brown holland proper, Embden them. The notion that it was better to bring back in exchange gold and silver for our own use was also for ever exploded. It was shown that gold and silver differ in no wise from other commodities; that for the purposes of coin, and for working up in the arts, we require so much of the precious metals annually, and no more; and that the merchant will always know better than the Legislature, from the state of the markets, when and in what quantities to bring them. In short, it was fully demonstrated that the interests of the merchant must | cloth, Flemish cloth, Gentish cloth, Isingham cloth, be those of the nation, and that for the prosperity of our trade it required nothing but that he should be free to export and import, according to his own judgment of the supply and the demand in the markets. 66 Oversisils cloth and others, while these again were nicely to be distinguished according to their breadth. Of paper alone there were no less than sixty varieties. Among these figured atlas ordinary, blue royal, sugar-bakers' blue, cap paper, chancery paper, medium fine, Genoa fine, bastard or double copy, German printing, crown, Lombard, Genoa pot, ordinary pot, superfine pot, and second pot, royal paper, super-royal, Rochelle paper, Holland paper, and ordinary royal. All these were rated, as, indeed, were all the three thousand articles in the list, in minute fractional sums-as for instance, atas ordinary at fifteen shillings and fourpence, and 21 hundredths of a penny per ream, besides additional rates. Blue royal, the next on the list, was to pay six shillings and threepence and 97 hundredths of a penny; sugar bakers' blue, five shillings and 971⁄2 hundredths of a penny; cap paper, three shillings and threepence, and 54 hundredths and three-eighths of a hundredth of a penny;, and so on to the end of the tariff. Among other absurdities "babies, or puppets for children” (dolls), were charged on importation with a duty of three shillings and fivepence, and 19 hundredths of a penny per gross, with a bounty paid on re-exportation per gross three shillings and eleven and a quarter hundredths of a penny. "Babies heads of earth" and "jointed babies" were rated at sums altogether different, but equally minute. of The history of the great commercial reform in England may be divided into four periods: the first, in which Mr. Huskisson took so prominent a part, extending from 1822 to 1830; the second from 1830 to 1840, which may be regarded as a continuation of that movement; the third, began in 1840, chiefly characterised by the repeal of the Corn Laws, and for ever associated with the names of Mr. C. P. Villiers, Mr. Cobden, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Bright, and Lord John Russell; the last, extending from the repeal of the Corn Laws, in 1846, to the present time, and represented in the person of Mr. Gladstone. Symptoms of the coming change had, indeed, been seen before these periods. Pitt had, in 1787, effected a considerable improvement in the tariff and excise laws. The greatest of his commercial reforms was undoubtedly his consolidation of the Customs Act, in 1787. Previously to that time, customs duties were paid according to a book of rates published in the reign of Charles II., and a new book of rates published in the reign of George I. Besides these, however, many new duties had, from time to time, been added, with innumerable complicated regulations. "The evil," says Mr. Macculloch, was increased by the careless manner in which the new duties were added to the old-a per-centage being some- From these specimens of the legislative wisdom of our times added to the original tax, while at other times the forefathers, it may be seen how largely commerce was commodity was estimated by a new standard of bulk, indebted to Mr. Pitt for sweeping away all the old weight, number, or value, and charged with an addi- customs duties by three thousand distinct resolutions. tional impost, without reference to the duties formerly and substituting in their place one single duty on cach imposed. The confusion arising from these sources was article, equivalent to the aggregate of the duties by still further augmented by the special appropriation of which it had previously been visited. Unlike his pelieach of the duties, and the consequent necessity of a tical contemporary, Fox, who held political economy in separate collection for each. The intricacy and annoy-contempt, as the silliest of all attempts to found a new ance inseparable from such a state of things proved a moral science, the son of the great Lord Chatham bad serious injury to commerce, and led to many frauds and imbibed some of the views of the "Wealth of Nations." abuses." Such was the care which the Legislature, There can be little doubt but that for the outbreak of the under the Georges, took of that British commerce which war with France, he would have carried still further was recognised then as the best sign of the nation's these wise measures. We have already given some strength. Langham's "Nett Duties and Drawbacks," account of his liberal treaty negotiated with France in published about a century since, contains upwards of 1786. In 1792 he announced a surplus revenue, which three thousand distinct articles with infinite fractional permitted him to diminish the duties upon articles duties assigned to them. The Custom House officer of consumed by the poorer classes. But the kind of crusade those days was empowered to inquire into the exact against the growth of what was called "French prin nature and quality of everything that came under his ciples," or the doctrines of the French Revolution, which eye in the way of imported goods. He was expected to the frenzied pamphlets of Burke at this time awakened, know all shades and differences of strange, outlandish pro- rapidly threw into the shade all such pacific and bene ducts, from "buffins, Mocadoes and Lisle grograms," to volent schemes. The war, which for more than twenty COLONEL PERRONET THOMPSON, AUTHOR OF THE "CATECHISM OF THE CORN LAWS," &c. of customs dues-the permanent imposts, the temporary however, preserved the monopoly of the trade with China, war duties, equal to two-thirds of the former, and including the monstrous privilege of being the sole chanfinally an additional tax, which amounted also to two- nel through which the English public were permitted to thirds of the permanent imposts on all French goods, by obtain their supplies of tea. In 1814, the number of articles way of reprisal for Napoleon's "Berlin Decrees," which of which the importation was absolutely prohibited numexcluded British commerce from the entire Continent. bered about two hundred; and it is stated in the report On other foreign goods these additional dues amounted of the select committee of the House of Commons in 1820, to one-fourth only of the permanent imposts. During that the Acts of Parliament on this subject in force in that dark period of our domestic annals, certain restric- 1815, amounted to no less than eleven hundred, to tions had indeed been removed, and free trade may be which many additions had since been made. The British 147.-NEW SERIES. |